"Sales have been dropping for years" - true and verifiable, if not particularly helpful for determining when or how or why readers dropped off, and with the usual caveats that we don't know digital or bookstore figures, or what any of that means to Hasbro.

"Hasbro dropped IDW in response to an unofficial fan boycott prompted by specific ideas from specific writers" - speculative nonsense with zero relationship to the earlier point.

 

What is an 'unofficial fan boycott'?

For that matter, what is an 'official' boycott?

 

As I mentioned before, just sharing my thoughts. You're welcome to call it "speculative nonsense", but I consider it equally nonsensical to think that as incendiary as this thread became a few days ago, resulting in it being shut down twice to clean up the off-topic debris, that somehow that sort of vocal frustration wouldn't translate -- or be linked in any way to -- a sales drop. A boycott can take many forms; it doesn't need to be a social movement, or have some party leader, or something equally eccentric. It can be individual choice, but repeated among many individuals concurrently.

For example: Let's take the idea of Megatron being an Autobot. Honestly, I found the idea quite interesting -- but apparently a lot of people didn't. That narrative creative direction could have easily caused a certain number of people to drop the book. That, in itself, is a boycott. Nothing fancy or political... they just didn't like it, and didn't support the direction of the book. It happens.

Let's look at Tom King's Batman. I'm going to leave out virtually all of that exhaustive debate, but the TLDR version is that people were turned off during the latter portion of Tom King's run. People were very vocal about the direction he -- as a writer -- was taking with Batman. The sales dropped significantly, causing the book to, for the first time in years, drop below its constant 100K sales a month trend, and it's usual place in the top #5 of sales to retailers. Eventually, they "took" Tom King off the book and allowed him to continue his direction in the Batman/Catwoman run. I checked the numbers afterwards; as soon as Tom King was off the book, the sales SHOT BACK up to 100K a month, without a #1 or a relaunch of any type. Up from a mid 80K monthly trend, which had taken place over the course of several months, correlating with a large number of fans' vocal disapproval in the book after the "marriage fiasco". The data is there and a drop in sales can be -- and almost always is -- directly linked to fan's distaste in an IP's creative direction. And that typically is reflected in their dislike in the writing; fans are far more forgiving than I am when it comes to the artwork, and the sales figures across a plethora of titles amid artist changes can pretty easily prove that.

I research the trends and look at market data. And I also observe the numbers of comics every month (prior to the covid-related data blackout that happened late last year). But numbers without context are just numbers. So I've also learned to quietly peruse the many different forums of different IPs to hear what people are saying. And that is fantastic data worth millions to corporations; it's the reason that Netflix's algorithm was worth so much. Buyer habits are directly linked to fan's opinions. A few loud voices without supportive data is one thing, but like I said before...the writing has been on the wall for some time with IDW. One only needed to read the forums and match up the sales numbers and you can very easily see a correlation.

The trick is to remain objective and neutral. You can't allow yourself to get too emotional or ignore the voices of the fandom because you don't like what they're saying. I'm fortunate to have some friends in the entertainment business so I'm privy to a lot of insider info, but I don't flaunt that around because most of what I get is stuff anyone person outside of the industry can see if they just look at the numbers.

It's when people ignore the data -- or find compelling fan conversations to be speculative nonsense -- that these companies pay the price. It's happened before, and it will happen again.

I'm just here to learn everything I can. After all, accurately predicting trends is how I recently got my first job as a producer.  

That being said, if you find everything I'm saying ridiculous, it's okay to agree to disagree. Either way, it's a fun topic and very interesting times indeed.

 

Pedantic math point, but correlation is not causation.

Though I’d concede that comics being more niche than other forms of entertainment, a fan backlash can really hurt. That doesn’t always mean a sales drop and fan backlash have a causal relationship, but it’s typically a pretty strong correlation.

My general thought on this though is that the real reason IDW is losing the license is someone pitched a good business relationship to Hasbro at a time IDW looked weak. IDW has had a lot of documented problems that are unrelated to the Transformers line, and if I were in business with them and saw a better offer I’d jump too. Even if the Transformers line was at a high point (which I think we all agree it was not).

I’ll miss IDW1’s continuity though. A lot of stuff I really enjoyed was in there. But it’s been gone for a while now so IDW losing the license is a bit easier to take.

 

I wanted to call out this point. I think it’s premature to write IDW’s obituary, but if they’re going down then what I’ll remember most fondly is their willingness to let writers finish their stories. Folks can say what they want about IDW1, but Roberts, Barber, Scott, and Roche all got to finish their story arcs. They went out of their way to let Furman finish up too, both his IDW1 stuff and his Marvel G1 stuff. I’m reminded of the joke at the end of 30 Rock “Joke’s on you. Not many of you watched us but we got paid anyway.” A lot of companies would drop a creative team as soon as the profit margins dropped, IDW didn’t. And as a reader I appreciated that. I’ve got a lot of books I can fondly read through again and again.

It’s a bummer that bit them in the backside with IDW2. If that had been stronger they’d likely still have the license. But that’s pure speculation on my part.

 

You're seeing trends that aren't there. There are so many variables in comics sales figures over the medium's history, and so much noise in a shorter term from retailer incentives or skip weeks or other unusual events, that it's a fools' errand to try to draw any conclusion about the single most determinant factor. But to also arrive at the conclusion that it's creative decisions by the writer, and to site as evidence a correlation between sales trends by storyline and message board flame wars, measured ... somehow? That's plain bonkers.

We live in an age where there is far more casually accessible data than ever, but little transparency to its completeness and validity, and virtually no insight into how corporate decision makers use that data. Every single case of fans trying to point to objective truth to justify their conclusions is instead an exercise in lying with statistics.

I mean, one of the most basic points is that the single guy most responsible for our comic book data has said repeatedly that it's not an effective tool for measuring key values like the profitability of a book or any decisions related to cancellation, creative changes, etc., yet people are constantly trying to reverse-engineer the rationale for those decisions from that limited data anyway.

 

I can't wait for IDW'S last issue, just so you guys can move on to arguing about the new series.

 

People are still arguing about whether Hot Rod got Optimus killed or not, IDW bashing isn't stopping any time soon.

 

And I guarantee that people will find a way to blame anything they don't like from the new publisher on IDW

 

If Pat Lee hadn't been such a sleazebag we wouldn't have had to deal with IDW in the first place.

 

And that's why I'm checking out after IDW ends.

 

This is the thing that gets me, like I'm sure Hasbro didn't agree with every choice that IDW made, but so much of it was clearly in direct consultation with them, and major features have been absorbed into the franchise fully. Look at Cyberverse, which was produced by Hasbro's own subsidiary. It has storylines, characters, and writers who came right from the late period of IDW1. It would be very weird for them to leave the publisher for reasons related to things they're maintaining in the franchise elements that they fully control.

To be clear, this isn't necessarily evidence of strategic alignment, adapting recent work is a simple and practical way to incrementally expand the franchise. But at a minimum, it suggests there is not a strategic goal to move away from IDW specifically, or longstanding concerns at a senior level that they harmed the brand. There could be, and probably is, a broader desire to take the franchise in a new direction with new talent, or even just a tactical opportunity to explore a new pitch or get favorable financial terms. It's all speculation, but there are much more plausible and simpler explanations.

 

A curious thought experiment for another day. I'm not sure where we would be if Dreamwave had lived on, especially once we moved past 2005 and into the live-action movie era.

 

There was a lot of commonality between early IDW and Dreamwave initially, and Dreamwave had problems beyond Pat Lee's personality and business practices. The comic industry was very different then, too.

I'm a broken record on this, and maybe others don't agree, but the Dreamwave "era," like maybe three years, was not that good. If you take away the nostalgia for the rebirth of G1, there's very little left. It's silly to pine for those days in contrast to the decades since, as even if you don't like any of the IDW continuities, the franchise generally and some of IDW's offshoot books have far surpassed DW even by its own standards.

 

Especially as a lot of what IDW did is likely to stick for a good long time. Even in media that is set in a new continuity you often see echoes of what came before as it helps draw in older fans that are familiar with the work.

But yeah, this is a fandom where RIRFIB and "Truck not Monkey" still cause endless debates. We are extremely unlikely to move on even when the new publisher starts. I'm just going to download the PDF back ups of IDW 1 and enjoy that as it's own thing for years to come.

 

Plus the underlying debates are not specific to this fandom or to comics, similar fights are happening across all of nerd media fandom.

 

No, I agree on a lot of that. I always enjoyed the energy and excitement of the Dreamwave era, but generally the storytelling as anything other than a nostalgia trip was lacking.

 

My biggest concern now is the collected volumes. Will the 2.0 volumes be able to finish? And more importantly, will the 1.0 IDW Collection volumes get to finish? I haven’t caught up on them yet, but they’re getting close to the end, right?

 

The hardcover collecting the end of Ruckley's run is scheduled to come out in November:
Transformers, Vol. 6: War's End (Transformers (2019)) https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1684059410/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_BNRXHYTNNR5MEPN0N64S

 

Oh wow, this thread was just bumped? How convenient. Now I don't have to do it myself, just so I can share some news about the company that owns the Skybound imprint:



Who is ready for Bored Ape Transformers NFTs?

Fucking end me already.